1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to providing a backup of a computer system application in a real time environment.
2. Related Art
Backup and archival of data from applications is a particular problem where the applications are required to run continuously without interruption (24×7 applications). In such an environment, the lack of ability to quiesce and pause operations for backup is a difficult technical problem that still does not have a good, universal solution. Also, typical application vendor approved backup methods are associated with a performance impact on applications.
Indeed, currently available backup methods all have drawbacks including one or more of: requiring application vendor support, requiring application specific code in the backup product, performance impact (sometimes to the extent of temporary application shutdown) on the production or live instance of the application, or lack of guaranteed consistency and recoverability of the captured data.
Examples of prior techniques for providing backup of a production instance of the application can be found in the following articles:
http://www.falconstor.com/en/solutions/index.cfm?pg=Application&sb=VMw are&bhcp=1
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q06-20060306-CommVault.pdf
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/tips0398.html?Open
The techniques described in the above referenced articles include the backup of a production instance of an application, and in some cases, describe a requirement to quiesce that production instance to guarantee capturing a consistent application state.
There is a therefore need to provide for the universal backup of, for example, 24×7 applications in a consistent way.